Description
The new book in Babette Cole's bestselling series of "family dilemmas that began with "Mummy Laid an Egg.""
Puberty. Who else but Babette Cole would have the temerity to tackle this subject in a picture book, and the genius to carry it off. The text, which takes the form of a conversation between a small girl and her teddy bear, is ingenious and funny.
As it turns out, it is the behaviour of the wonderfully depicted Mr. and Mrs. Hormone that plays havoc with the physical and emotional states of girls and boys between, roughly, eight to eighteen years. The book is bound to be controversial but Babette Cole has never taken the conventional path and her readers love her for her outrageous approach to little-mentioned topics.
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
"Babette Cole is as batty, rebellious and strange as her creations... funny, unrestrained and totally unforgettable." - "Independent on Sunday"
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
Kirkus Review US:A child asks her teddy bear about growing up and gets an earful in this wildly irreverent look at puberty. Its all the work of Mr. and Mrs. Hormone (and their ratlike dog), the teddy explains, who concoct potions that give children bosoms, pimples, hair in new places, radical mood swings, and ultimately the urge and ability to make babies. Depicting the Hormones as hairy monsters bearing gleefully malevolent expressions, Cole (Bad Habits!, 1999, etc.) tracks male and female physical changes in a pair of unclothed, skinny-limbed teenagers. Though many books, starting with Robie H. Harriss Its Perfectly Normal (1994), cover the territory in less ghoulish fashion, here at least readers will get some basic information, plus the idea that certain rough patches on the road to adulthood are survivable. (Picture book/nonfiction. 10-14) (Kirkus Reviews) 
